1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to network switches and, more particularly, to a system and method for hierarchical adaptive dynamic egress port and queue buffer management.
2. Introduction
Increasing demands are being placed upon the data communications infrastructure. In commodity shared memory on-chip buffer switch designs, efficient utilization of buffering resources is a key factor in minimizing frame loss. When a capacity of a packet buffer in a switch is exceeded, the packet buffer can back up and packet loss can occur. As would be appreciated, such packet loss can significantly impact overall application behavior.
A trend in today's network devices is the growing number of queues per port. This can result, for example, by the increasing use of virtualization in the network infrastructure. This rise in the number of queues per port places increasing demands on the traffic management capabilities that can determine the potential for packet losses.
For some classes of traffic, packet loss can produce little to no impact on network services and applications. In data-center applications, however, packet loss can be unacceptable. What is needed therefore is a mechanism that enables hierarchical adaptive dynamic egress port and queue buffer management.